Respect Yourself

CTL-E-5927 · Work · song · 1971

VERIFIED evidence grade — master store (canonical CSV)

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-00159 · provenance: canonical master store (CSV), record CTL-W-0043 + build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-5927. Master record source: CTL seed 2026-10-16 — UNVERIFIED, verify before public citation.

“Respect Yourself” is a 1971 single by the Staple Singers, released October 1, 1971, on Stax Records and written by Luther Ingram and Mack Rice, produced by Al Bell with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and the Memphis Horns. The song carried the Staples' gospel-rooted family harmonies into an explicit message of self-respect and mutual regard at the height of the civil rights era's cultural turn. It reached number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 2 on the Hot Soul Singles chart, becoming the group's breakthrough pop hit and the title track of their 1972 album Be Altitude: Respect Yourself. The recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002 and appears on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs list. The song is staged as its own record, distinct from the album record already in the graph, on the same song-versus-album precedent applied in Wave 1.

The record

• Year: 1971
• Work type: song

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 2 — 747 Program, Wave 9; second Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no Respect Yourself entity in the live graph at 3,603 entities (exact / normalized / alias + token containment); ID CTL-E-5927 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 4 — Scan Tail Wave 1 packet ordered reserve, position 2 of 20 (corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json ranked clean survivor #429). The scan supplied the NAME STRING ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — signature recording of a homed Chicago gospel-soul group; core scope. Vital status: n/a (Work). STATISTICS (sourced, dated): Released October 1, 1971 (Wikipedia, label discography); number 12 Billboard Hot 100 and number 2 Hot Soul Singles; Grammy Hall of Fame induction 2002. CONFLICT SHOWN, NOT BLENDED: Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs places the song at number 468 on its 2010 list and number 464 on the 2004 list — both dated rankings are carried, neither is merged into the other. MEDIA: photo HELD (Stax-era Staple Singers group portrait, c. 1971 named as candidate; no file-page verification in this pass); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-5927-respect-yourself.svg); video HELD (no matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged); audio HELD (no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Non-place record; no map attaches at the entity layer.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created SVG (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced facts) | video = HELD (Shorts Link Map Short #11 documents the parent album Be Altitude: Respect Yourself (CTL-E-5867), not this song) | audio = HELD (No recording with a CTL rights basis was staged in this pass.)

Relationships

• Staple Singers — authored by
  “Respect Yourself” is a Staple Singers recording, released on Stax in 1971.

Sources

• Wikipedia, "Respect Yourself" (accessed 2026-10-16) — October 1, 1971 Stax release, writers Luther Ingram and Mack Rice, producer Al Bell, number 12 Hot 100 and number 2 Hot Soul Singles peaks, Grammy Hall of Fame 2002, Rolling Stone rankings — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respect_Yourself (primary source · build store)
• Concord / Craft Recordings media kit, "Staple Singers — Stax Collection: Respect Yourself lyric video" (accessed 2026-10-16) — the label group's own presentation of the song in the Staple Singers' Stax catalog — https://mediakits.concord.com/p/staple-singers-stax-collection/respect-yourself-lyric-video.html (primary source · build store)
• https://www.grammy.com/awards/hall-of-fame-award/ (verification source · master store)

Evidence note (master store)

Song title: 'Respect Yourself' Recording artist: The Staple Singers GRAMMY Hall of Fame lists it as a Stax single dated 1971, inducted 2002

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Record CTL-E-5927 · Combined Graph record U-00159 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources · 1 mapped relationship.
Directory: all entity records · the knowledge graph

Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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